Two more events from the Biology-Chemistry Club

Our campus club continues in October with two more events. This Monday evening at 5:00 in room 125 of Northside Hall the club has arranged for biochemist Shahir Rizk to give a talk about graduate school - one possible avenue to consider after graduation. His talk is directed to sophomores and juniors to discuss what students can do to gain experiences that will give them an advantage over other applicants.  Undergraduate research, tutoring, and club membership are just some activities to consider. 

This weekend the club has another community outreach event planned - again at the River Park branch of the public library. This time they celebrate National Chemistry Week with the theme of "Stellar Science". National Chemistry Week is held each October during the week of the 23rd because the date 10/23 symbolizes the "power" of one of the most important constants in chemistry: Avogadros' number, 6.022´10^23. The fun starts at 11:00 AM, so please stop by with a younger family member and let them see just how exciting science can be.

Addendum:  Here are a few photos of our students just after setup, waiting for the kids to arrive. This is a great experience for the kids and also our students.

 

Students present summer research in Indianapolis

This Friday morning, students and faculty boarded a bus early in the morning to take them to the 2018 Indiana LSAMP Annual Research Conference. The one-day event was held in Indianapolis at the Ivy Tech Community College Culinary and Conference Center. While chemistry professor Grace Muna participated in a panel discussion on serving as a faculty mentor for the LSAMP program and biology professor Andy Schnabel served as a faculty facilitator, the real stars were the summer research students who showcased the work they had completed as LSAMP scholars. Presenting research at a conference to faculty and peers is a valuable experience and is a great way to celebrate and formally conclude one's research project.  Congratulations to all the students who attended.

Giovanna Gorski - Computer Science Major

vCARE: Application of Geotagging to Improve Delivery of Public Health Services

Winnie Ihano - Biochemistry Major (with Dr. Rizk)
Characterization of Adenosine Deaminase (ADA) Mutants in Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID)

Stacey Jean-Baptiste - Biological Sciences Major (with Dr. Muna)
Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Aminothiols Using Modified Electrodes with Gold Nanoparticles

Jessica Jones - Biological Sciences Major
Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on Plant Grown and Survival

Jones, Keon - Biological Sciences Major
The Effect of EF-P Post-translational Modifications on Cell Physiology in E. coli
Jones also participated in a panel discussion about the student perspective of undergraduate research.

David Mitchell - Biological Sciences Major
Pollinator Diversity and Abundance in Neighboring Urban Wetlands2

Christian Moreno - Chemistry Major (with Dr. Marmorino)
Development of a Tool to Operate on Periodic Trends

Pierre-Emmanuel N’Guetta - Biological Sciences Major (with Dr. Rizk)
Engineering a FABulous Fluorescent Glyphosate Biosensor Using Phosphate-binding Protein (PhnD)

Library display

The Schurz library has chosen to highlight chemistry this year for the month of October - so no, that's not a Halloween ghost in the right side of the display cabinet, but rather a chemistry lab coat.  But just like Halloween, chemistry is "out of this world", which is the theme this year set by the American Chemical Society for National Chemistry Week of October 21-27. Keep a lookout for a future post in which students from the Biology-Chemistry Club hold an outreach event at the local public library for kids.  Thanks to Assistant Dean (and inorganic chemist) Bill Feighery and Vice Chancellor (and organic chemist) Doug McMillen for setting up the library display.

Biology-Chemistry Club starts off strong

We aren't even a month into the Fall semester, and yet the Biology-Chemistry Club is full of action. The events actually started toward the end of summer session II when the club organized a community outreach program at the Riverpark Library called Rock Candy Romp! The event was held on July 31, and while it lasted just one hour, it was a very intense time of science fun. Our students prepared a volcano and set up some dissecting microscopes for kids to look through. Club members also helped kids make rock candy - an early introduction to recrystallization to prepare them for organic chemistry lab (in the far future). 

Next there was the Fall Semester Kickoff at the end of the first week of classes held at Lang Lab in the evening. Professors and students got a chance to mingle and relax before the onslaught of test-taking (for students) and grading (for faculty). Thanks to the club for generously providing the pizza.  The collage above is a collection of photos taken that night. 

The club also sponsored "Research Night" on September 10th during which students got a chance to hear about the research that faculty are conducting on campus. Students can get involved in such activities for course credit (such as CHEM-C 409 Chemical Research) or even for pay (as a work-study student during the Fall and Spring semesters or funded by a SMART or LSAMP grant during the Summer.

 

The next plan that is in the works is another science outreach event, this time planned for the children at the Ronald McDonald House Charities at Memorial Hospital. If you are interested in helping with this activity or wish to join the Biology-Chemistry Club, please contact any one of the biology or chemistry faculty and they'll put you contact with someone from the club.

Students return from summer research

 

While many of our students worked on campus this summer researching the faculty here, three of our biochemistry majors researched elsewhere.  One of these was Sandy Ho who won our campus's RC Med Review Research Fellowship last spring.  She worked with Professor Laurie Littlepage at the Mike and Josie Harper Cancer Research Institute which is a collaboration between the IU School of Medicine and the University of Notre Dame.  Ho studied how oxidative stress affects breast cancer cells in the presences or absence of a specific aquaporin (a channel protein that allows water and glycerol to flow across the cell membrane).

Hunter Richman attended the University of Delaware REU program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. He researched the kinetics and thermodynamics of post synthetic ligand exchange in Cu(II) metal organic cages with graduate student Garrett Taggart in the group of Professor Eric Bloch. Richman enjoyed the hands-on research experience and the preview into what graduate school might be like. He stands by his research poster (on the right) beside his professor in the photo below during a symposium at the end of the summer. You can find their abstract HERE.

Maggie Fink who was funded by the National Science Foundation REU program to work at the University of Notre Dame in Dr. Shaun Lee's biology lab.  Fink describes her work and experience in the paragraph that follows. She is pictured second from the right in the photo above.

 

"I worked with Streptococcus pyogenes, the human pathogen responsible for strep throat and necrotizing fascitis. Specifically, I investigated the role of streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B (SpeB) in virulence through interactions with Streptolysin S. SpeB is a protease with a large number of known substrates and no definite link to its activity correlates to the severity of infection. Streptolysin S is toxin responsible for red blood cell lysis and serious infections. Understanding the interactions between the two, if any even exist, could provide insight into how S. pyrogenes can cause a range of infection severity in hosts, from remaining commensal to a life threatening illness. Participating in the REU program at Notre Dame challenged me as a scientist to think creativity and critically when deisgning experiments and analysing data. Additionally, working with graduate students in a larger lab gave me a better idea of what going to graduate school will be like and helped solidify my desire to pursue a PhD and career in research."
 

Summer research, whether on- or off-campus, has a wide range of benefits.  It is often a paid position so you can earn money gaining experience rather than waiting tables, and it can help you decide whether research is really what you want to do. It used to be that undergraduate research helped you stand out from the crowd when applying to graduate school; nowadays, it is becoming the norm, so that you may be at a disadvantage if you lack research experience.

 

Faculty attend education conference at summer's end

 

The 25th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education was held at the University of Notre Dame this summer. Department chair Gretchen Anderson, associate professor Grace Muna, assistant professor Shahir Rizk, laboratory supervisor Connie Fox, and adjunct professor Merilee Britt eagerly took advantage of the close locale. The conference started on Sunday, July 29 and ended on Thursday, August 2. 

During the conference Dr. Marya Lieberman of Notre Dame, who gave one of the plenary lectures, invited instructors teaching undergraduate analytical chemistry courses to participate in a project to analyze pharmaceutical drugs distributed in developing nations to test their quality. Muna's analytical chemistry class (CHEM-C 310) will analyze levofloxacin using HPLC this semester as part of the project to give her students a chance to do real life application of analytical chemistry.

Rizk (pictured below) gave a presentation titled "Transitioning students from the classroom to the world; creating better prepared and more engaged scientists" based on current, and planned, efforts many in our senior-level biochemistry courses (CHEM-C 484, 485, 486). While success in the classroom for four years is great, it is success for the rest of one's life in the real world that truly matters. Whether students graduate from IU South Bend to pursue graduate school, medical school, industry, or some other endeavor, we hope that we are giving them the tools to succeed.

 

 

Summer research with Muna

Professor Grace Muna is the analytical chemist of the department. She shares with Professor Rizk the uncanny ability to keep her lab occupied year-round with undergraduate research students, which is a very difficult task because coursework typically pulls students away during the fall and spring semesters. This summer she has three students working with her on projects combining electrochemistry and nanochemistry.

Stacey Jean-Baptiste (pictured middle) is a biology major and LSAMP scholar. She is working on developing a sensitive method to detect homocysteine in biological samples by electrodepositing gold nanoparticles onto a glassy  carbon electrode to modify its surface. Gold nanoparticles are expected to catalyze the oxidation of homocysteine. Thiol-containing amino acids, such as homocysteine, play crucial roles in key physiological processes; homocysteine levels have been linked to a number of health disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, developing a sensitive method to measure homocysteine in biological samples such as urine is important for prevention and treatment of these diseases.

Another biology major, Joel Green, (pictured left) came on board just three weeks ago. He stopped by to chat with Stacey and he took so long that Dr. Muna thought she should put him to work. She asked him whether he would be interested in research and he was up to it. Joel is working on the same project with Stacey, however, he's modifying gold (not glassy carbon) electrodes with gold nanoparticles and testing their performance on the catalytic oxidation of homocysteine and cysteine. This allows the group to do a comparison study to see which modified electrode outperforms the other in terms of selectivity, sensitivity and stability.

Chemistry major Joseph Williamson (pictured right) was continuing the ongoing work of developing a portable method to detect lead in water. He was testing whether bismuth nanoparticles on glassy carbon electrodes can be stabilized by a nafion polymer (based on Teflon) to enhance their long term stability. Joseph recently moved back to his home state, and will be continuing his education at University of Arkansas in the fall.